[update] 2015 Doctor of Medicine Graduation! Reflections of the last four years.

After three years of Biomedicine and four years of Medicine, I have just graduated from the Doctor of Medicine!

Over the past four years of Medicine, I have learned a lot, both inside and outside of medicine. Looking back, it is incredible to think of how much I have learned and done throughout this time, some of which I would never expected to have done four years ago.

Medicine is very fun and exciting! Sometimes even more so than I had anticipated when starting out on this course. There are many different medical conditions, which makes the history, examination, investigation and management skills very difficult, but also makes the diagnostic dilemma challenging. As a combination between science and art, there is much to do as a doctor, treating the whole patient. There have been many inspirational doctors of different specialties who have shaped the way in which I would like to practice medicine in the future.

Apart from finishing my medical degree, I have managed to attend a conference and had an abstract accepted as a second author. It was an interesting experience to stand in front of a poster of an international conference and speak to people about our research. There are a few other abstracts we have submitted and will submit to other conferences. Hopefully some of them get accepted and we can attend more conferences next year, and get to publish some work in journals too.

Outside of medicine, I have been doing voluntary tutoring every weekend for these four years of my medical course, as well as GAMSAT and other tutoring. This has given me an appreciation of how difficult it may be to learn certain things which I take for granted, particularly basic math arithmetic skills. It also reinforced the importance of "constant repetition" as a crucial aspect of learning, where a student "gets" something after a session one week, only to forget it the next time I see them; although every week the knowledge sticks a little better. It has been great to see the "aha moment" when students finally understand what you have been trying to teach them. However, it was also eye-opening to see how some of these skills, among others, appear to have been neglected in the schools teaching some of these students who have been in the Victorian education system from the start.

I managed to spend a lot of time enjoying table tennis at the clinical school. At the start of my time there, I was very rusty, having not played for quite a while. However, after a lot of practice, I came back to the level that I was before, and may have improved somewhat. I don't know how much I will be able to play in the future, but it has been a fun time playing table tennis in the clinical school during breaks.

During the past two years, I have also begun running regularly, and a couple of months ago I ran my first marathon! This is something I would never have expected to have done four years ago. I used to get injured when running even short distances, but I have now sorted that out for distances less than 22 km. Anything greater is still a challenge though; especially a 42.195 km marathon! I hope to be able to continue running regularly and in events in the future, although running in events may be difficult if I don't have those weekends off as a doctor. I hope that I can run a marathon in under four hours next time. We'll see how possible that is next year.

More recently, I decided to restart learning piano songs, for the first time in over ten years. No classic songs though; I started with K-pop songs and have continued on to learn some Yiruma songs. I became disillusioned with practicing piano in year 7, although now I have come to appreciate the magic of piano music, and the feeling of accomplishment of being able to play a song.

These past four years have reinforced various lessons in life too. Although I have learned and developed considerably during the past four years, these four years have made me realize that I have a lot more to learn and to improve myself in the future.

Unfortunately in life, you cannot always get what you want. However, you should try anyway, and learn new things and become a better person. Many things require a lot of hard work; "constant repetition" as the head of Surgery says. Almost four years ago, I was trying to be funny and came up with a quote: "Life is like Angry Birds. Some things are easy. Other things need hard work, strategy, timing, and luck." But even though it was intended to be humorous, I feel that it still rings true.

On the other hand, there may be surprises in life where something almost miraculous happens which you would never expect. Even though I always believed that I was good a science during high school and expected to do well in that section of the GAMSAT, I would never have expected to receive a score of 100 in the science section of the GAMSAT two times in a row! I also didn't expect to receive excellent topics in my second GAMSAT which combined with my extra preparation and strategy with essay planning and structure which helped my section 2 score rise by 18 points! This test is a significant proportion of what got me into the course in the first place, and led me to the journey to where I am today.

In some way, even though you cannot always get what you want, these events remind us that we must appreciate the many things that do happen as we want them to, or even better than expected. If everything was easy, then life would be too boring, wouldn't it?

Anyway, I will be working as an intern next year, and continuing to learn both inside and outside of medicine. There is a long journey ahead still.